The Core

Just because you can't dance, doesn't mean you shouldn't dance. —Alcohol

"I really do believe this: that music is too important to be left to professionals..."
Michelle Shocked, "Austin City Limits" TV show, 1990. http://www.mypage.tsn.cc/toddby/derivations.htm

I always thought that was Pete Seeger that said it, but as best I can tell on the interwebs, it's not.

"Florida is like the South tried to have a baby with California but after the fact realized they were siblings and ended up with a troglodyte child. "
Dr. Cool

"Les indigènes eux, ne fonctionnent guère en somme qu’à coups de trique, ils gardent cette dignité, tandis que les Blancs, perfectionnés par l’instruction publique, ils marchent tout seuls."
  -- Celine, Voyage au bout de la nuit

In English, roughly
"The natives, they hardly did anything without being beaten with a cudgel. They retained that much dignity, whereas the whites, perfected by public education, worked entirely of their own accord."

Well, as the historian, that's probably about how I would put it. Though Celine is writing in the context of being drafted and then deserting (I think) in WWI and seeing the carnage and raises the question of what it means to be perceived as sane by a society that has gone insane.

So I think Celine's point is more about the internalization of masters, the liberty of mind versus the liberty of body, which I guess is the same thing as a tool to instill compliance.

I first read the quote about 20 years ago and it always stuck with me.

That's commitment to a cause.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. --Samuel Johnson April 1775

When viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, red flags just look like flags.

-reddit